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sentinel-3-sl-2-aod-nrt·dataset

Global haze and aerosol amount maps (Copernicus)

Sentinel-3 SLSTR Aerosol Optical Depth (NRT)
atmosphere ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Maps of how many tiny airborne particles, such as smoke, dust, and pollution, are in the atmosphere, gridded at about 9.5 km, tracking where these particles are and how they travel.

How it's made. Made by ESA Copernicus from the Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer, processed to Level-2 aerosol products delivered within about three hours.

How & where you'd use it. Helps monitor air quality, wildfire smoke, dust storms, and the long-range transport of pollution.

What's measured

9500mAerosolCopernicusECESAEUGlobalPT3HSLSTRSL_2_AOD____SatelliteSentinelSentinel-3

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2021-02-14 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 SLSTR AOD product quantifies the abundance of aerosol particles, and monitors their global distribution & long-range transport, at the scale of 9.5 x 9.5 km2. All observations are made available in less than 3 hours from the SLSTR observation sensing time.

Get the data

copernicus_access.py
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
    collections=["sentinel-3-sl-2-aod-nrt"],   # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
    bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60),             # your area (W,S,E,N)
    datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items())            # then read assets with rioxarray / xarray
Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.